Activism. It’s good to stand for something, better to do something. But, there is always that “one guy.” You know them. The Active Activist. This guy is the one with the paste colored Ford Pinto that is being held together with myriad bumper stickers of touchy topics of the day, old 60’s clichés and sun peeled smiley faces. You wonder: What are they supporting now, they must keep it in a Blackberry.

It is, indeed, good to stand for something, and better to do something. The people you’re speaking of think they’re doing good, and they probably do, in fact, do some good.

I think the point that they (and many of the rest of us) constantly miss is that it’s a whole lot easier to do a lot of good if you focus your attention to just one or two things.

But 1 or 2 things or 100, not being afraid to share what you think and backing it up with positive actions is the cornerstone of the American spirit.

Hypnotism is particularly funny, especially the false memories than can be obtained via hypnosis. There is no scientific way to prove that any of the “false memories” are true. So how do you know if the person you’ve hypnotized is a liar?

We have two quotes I like to explain bogyism:

I could not find the meaning of bogyism for the life of me. But when I saw the word I had to laugh out loud. It reminds me of a small child that can’t stop picking their nose.

They have a disease.

It’s called bogyism!

or alternatively…

A bogyism is saying something in the style of Humphrey Bogart. “The only reason to have money is to tell any SOB in the world to go to hell.”

Funambulism is a word that means “walking on a tightrope”. While there may be many ways to describe the notion of walking through the air, balanced precariously on only a rope or wire, I don’t think “fun” is one of them.

In fact, the idea that the word “fun” appears in this “ism” is quite contrary to most people’s idea of fun.

Here are some negative thoughts on the part of one who doesn’t care for photojournalism:

I think photojournalism is hilarious because it’s such a sham.

Journalism is meant to be objective - just the facts, presented unequivocally, with the reporter being unbiased and outside the topic.

And of course, adding “real” photographs should make it even more so, right? But photography is irrevocably subjective! Every photograph ever taken was biased.

The lighting, the composition, the focus, every tiny bit of a photograph is determined (intentionally or accidentally) by the photographer. And what’s even worse, is that photojournalism presents these images as what a witness would see if they were there.

In trying to become even more objective, photojournalism has mired itself in total subjectivity and can never be redeemed.

Cannibalism is an ism of practice…and what a strange ism it is! The practice or action of eating people…yuck!

I suppose cannibalism attracts loners: tribes of pointy-toothed, grumpy folks way out in the middle of nowhere; odd men who hide in their apartments and scare the neighbors — the Jeffry Daumer people of the world.

Note to self: stick to large crowds of people and stop hanging out with those pasty D&D kids.

Ecotourism is a relatively new ism that appeals to those who think about our environment constantly — even when they’re vacationing.
I had a sneaking suspicion that this level of concern for the environment is extraordinary, and did a little unscientific research to see if I could back that suspicion up with some evidence.

Here are some quick statistics: 

• Google lists 5,100,000 results for the search ecotourism, and lists 140,000,000 results for the search tourism.
• Yahoo lists 10,400,000 results for ecotourism and 243,000,000 for tourism.
• MSN’s Live Search lists 3,591,720 results for ecotourism, and 108,820,445 for tourism.
• The ratios for ecotourism results to tourism results on Google, Yahoo and MSN are 1:27, 1:23 and 1:30, respectively.
• So on average, there are 27 more results for tourism than for ecotourism in the major search engines.
• According to Pew Research, as of March 2007, 71% of U.S. adults are online.
• According to the July 1, 2003 U.S. Census, there are 218.8 million adults living in the U.S. - meaning 155.3 million adults are online.

Now, let’s take all those boring stats and make one assumption that Adam Smith’s famous Invisible Hand theory of economics is in control of the internet, and the ratio of pages about ecotourism compared to the number of pages about tourism is equal to the percentage of the population who is interested in ecotourism.

That would mean of our 300 million-strong population, there are only 5.75 million voting adults, or 1.9% of our total population, who really put their green money where their green mouths are, and try to live a life of constant ecologically-friendly actions.

No wonder it’s so hard for us to keep our few remaining pristine environments clean and out of the grubby little hands of industry and legislators.